Web fiction
Query letter
The formal letter a writer sends to literary agents, magazine editors and sometimes publishers to propose a work: the standard format for unrepresented authors' submissions.
A query letter (or query) is "a formal letter sent by a writer to literary agents, magazine editors, and sometimes publishing houses or companies, to propose writing ideas." It is "the standard format for unrepresented authors' submissions to potential agents," typically 200 to 400 words covering the work's topic, a brief plot description, a short author bio and the target audience.
For a novelist the query is the doorway to traditional publishing: as the standard submission format, it decides whether the manuscript itself gets read, so it carries a whole novel's odds in a few hundred words. Its core is the logline plus whatever makes the author credible. Serial writers query from strength, since a web serial with a measurable readership is evidence the story holds an audience; whether to query at all is the decision mapped in publishing paths.